If God Does Not Exist…
…Everything is permitted. So goes the saying. I don’t buy it.
First, it’s of neither practical nor theoretical necessity to posit a divine origin of morality in order to have a solid basis for doing good, avoiding evil, and recognizing the difference. The day-to-day moral decisions people consider and make rarely involve a theological archeology of the moral law or an exploration of its philosophical origins. Furthermore, while people disagree about moral norms and principles, most people have some moral presuppositions in which their deliberations are grounded. These presuppositions may be religious, but they don’t have to be. A belief in Jesus may motivate one volunteer at a soup kitchen, while the very presence of someone who is hungry may motivate another. A theist may avoid murder because it violates God’s commandment, while an atheist may avoid murder because of the loss and misery it delivers. The consequences of human action alone provide reason for not permitting everything.
Second, even if God exists and has written the moral law, the believer still acts based on the presupposition that the consequences of obeying the moral law are better than and preferable to the consequences of violating it. In doing so, the believer and the unbeliever share basically the same presupposition. Granted, the believer will speak in terms of eternity (Heaven and Hell, eternal union or separation from God, etc.), while the unbeliever will speak in terms of temporality (happiness and misery, temporal union or separation from others, etc.), but both presuppose that good moral action has one set of consequences, immoral action has quite another, and that the former consequences are more desirable than the latter—if the latter consequences are desirable at all.
Third, while the absence of a divine lawmaker would leave humanity without a divine moral law, humanity would still have ground on which to build an objective morality. Unless it is held that God composed the moral law arbitrarily, then the moral law is something that makes sense given the way of the world. There’s a difference between killing a flea and killing a person not merely because God says so, but because there are significant differences, physical and metaphysical, between an insect and a person. Therefore, even if it were left to men and women to write moral laws, they are not thereby doomed to write arbitrarily, without rhyme or reason. Moral reflection can look to insights about the physical and metaphysical as a sailor would look to a guiding star.
If I sound like the New Atheists here, it’s because I think they’re basically right about not needing God to explain morality. Of course, I differ from them in holding that religion has had much to contribute to discourse about morality and, more importantly, that the claims of religion speak to truths about human action, history, and destiny that reside beyond the reach of human reason. Jesus was a moral teacher, yes, but his teaching extended infinitely beyond the earthly moral life. All I’m contesting here is the notion that everything is permitted if God does not exist, not that the existence or non-existence of God has no consequence for what it means to be human.
Kyle Cupp is a freelance writer and editor with a background in literature, language, and philosophy.
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I respectfully disagree.If God does not exist, one will do good in so far as it suits him/her to do so. If it becomes inconvenient then morality as we know it is cast out, or is redefined to encompass whatever perversity one wishes to indulge in. Stalin and Hitler each founded a new ethic that freely allowed them to murder millions in the name of a higher cause. Others have followed their example.A believer is motivated to do good and maintain a true sense of morality whether convenient or not, and subjects his/her personal wishes and feelings to an objective moral order as determined by the Magisterium of the Church.
Since when did Hitler not believe in god?
That doesn’t sound like atheism to me. In fact, it is impossible to believe that the Holocaust could have happened in the absense of rampant anti-Semitism, totally Christian in origin. Stalin had the support of the Russian Orthodox Church throughout his bloody rain.
It was a 5th cent. CE Christian mob motivated to do good that dragged Hypatia into the street and brutally murdered her. By any stretch, Hypatia was a remarkable woman. Ever heard of the Albigensian Crusade? That’s when early 13th cent. CE Christians motivated to do good massacred up to a million people because they thought differently. Know how Judenberg got its name? It was in honor of late 15th cent. CE Christians motivated to do good burned alive every Jewish person they could find. I can keep going, but you get the point. I hope.
If we atheists are moral till it suits us not to be, then why are we so vastly underrepresented in prison populations? And I’ll thank you to not insult me by assuming that I engage in ‘perversity’ without bothering to get to know who I am at all. You clearly have a lot to learn about atheists and lest you sound the fool whenever speaking about us, I suggest you do so.
Nor would I call blind obeyance based expectation of reward/fear of punishment being moral. Without understanding why something is moral, how can just acting in accordance to a set of rules be moral? A robot can be programmed to obey rules. There are already good reasons to act ethically without invoking any god.
Then there’s the whole Euthyphro Dilemma where anyone claiming morality comes from god is skewered on one of its two horns. Either an act is moral because god says it is, or it is moral because there is a standard which god passes on to us. The first is simply whimsical, and thus not moral at all, and with the second god is unnecessary to understanding morality and it is just the messenger.
The problem lies in absolute ideologies, of which religion is but one. When we are not allowed to question right down to the core of a belief system, that is when atrocities can occur.
If God does not exist, one will do good in so far as it suits him/her to do so.
If God does exist, one will also do good in so far as it suits him or her to do so.
Stalin and Hitler each founded a new ethic that freely allowed them to murder millions in the name of a higher cause. Others have followed their example.
If I’m not mistaken, Hitler used religion to try to give his cause legitimacy. Either way, there’s nothing stopping a religious believer from founding an ethic, based on his or her religion, that allows for genocide or other grave immoral action.
A believer is motivated to do good and maintain a true sense of morality whether convenient or not, and subjects his/her personal wishes and feelings to an objective moral order as determined by the Magisterium of the Church.
A non-believer may be just as motivated to do good and live a moral life, whether convenient or not, because he or she recognizes an objective standard to which he or she decides to conform his or her life.
My dealing with this theme is here, which I hope people will look at and consider as well:
http://vox-nova.com/2009/05/05/because-the-law-forbids-everything-becomes-permitted/
Zizek (and perhaps Sartre before him?) says the opposite: if God doesn’t exist, then nothing is permitted. I don’t want to get into specifics on this, since I don’t recall them off the top of my head.
Something very Zizekian to say here is that evil people do bad things, but to make good people do evil things, it takes ideology (or, in this case, religion).
This also reminds me of what another philosopher, Avital Ronell, says, beginning about the four minute mark of the following video. Despite her academic pretentiousness, I always thought she had a point:
Arturo
My piece connects to Zizek, too.
I agree with you Kyle. The drive to do good is ingrained in us on a deeper level (“I will write my law on their hearts”). Take Buddhism for example – essentially an agnostic religion that derives many of its first principles from observation of nature and humanity.
To me, there are two categories of good – personal goods and societal goods. There is often overlap between the two, but in some cases, mostly regarding the sexual urge, the societal good isn’t quite as apparent on an individual level and requires a social context. For example, sex is a good, so on a personal/biological level, we are driven to have sex, and the desire is natural and should be indulged. It’s only on the social level that we realize that sex belongs within a social construct for the well-being of offspring. Without cultural context handed down from our ancestors, we are unlikely to come to that good on our own accord.
We don’t need God to tell us that pre-marital sex is a bad idea. Society can figure that out pretty easily itself. Artificial contraception, likewise, will eventually be seen as a bad idea after a few generations. We’re just the generation with no perspective and we’re going to have to learn the hard way.
Religion is similar to culture in some aspects – morality is an evolution of the progressive reflection on the experiences, both positive and negative, of the individuals within that culture throughout history.
If God does not exist, one will do good in so far as it suits him/her to do so. If it becomes inconvenient then morality as we know it is cast out, or is redefined to encompass whatever perversity one wishes to indulge in. Stalin and Hitler . . .
Chris C,
How do you explain the many atheists who live moral lives? And what makes you say Hitler was an atheist?
David, you are correct that many atheists do live moral lives, however my point was that there is nothing in atheist belief, or non-belief if you will that compels them to do so. No one can judge one a “bad atheist” in the same way they can identify one as a bad Christian for example.There are standards and norms by which one can judge one’s life to be a sound example of following Christ or not, but to one who denies God, there is really no such set of norms on which to judge them, at least not on moral grounds. They can easily change the rules of morality, as Stalin, Hitler and notable others have done to justify their barbarity in the name of a subjectively defined good; a master race, proletarian rights, etc.
As for Hitler though baptized a Cathlolic he was well known in adulthood to be violently opposed to the faith. His “gods” were those of Aryan supremacy and German nationalism as Pope Pius XI and some courageous German bishops made clear.
So, atheists are different from Christians, how? Everyone can change their morals to suit their present behavior, and many people do. Belief in God does not stop one from doing so. Just look at all the Christian pastors caught out embezzling, committing adultery, lying, etc.
The point is, atheists are people. Christians are people. People (other than sociopaths) have morals. People may ignore or change those morals to suit themselves. This is not an atheist or Christian quality, it is a quality of people.
Sure people, Christians included, change their morals to suit themselves and often do. When Christians do so they are guilty of sin, and sooner or later they may well be callled on it by one citing the very faith that they are denying by their hypocritical conduct and behavior. We all know how one gives evidence of being a “Bad Christian” as you prove by the examples that you cite. What exactly does one have to do to be a “bad atheist?” Such a one may make morally good or bad choices but how does a non-belief inform their choice? Where do they even get it into their minds to subscribe to an ethic or right and wrong, good and evil in the first place? They probably can thank 2 millenia of Western Civilization informed by Christian ethics, though they may never know it.
What exactly does one have to do to be a “bad atheist?”
Uh… go to church?
(Thanks, PF)
Tell you what, Chris, as soon as you explain to me why every civilization, no exceptions, has some variation of the Golden Rule (you remember – Do unto others…), then you’ll be a little closer to the truth of the matter.
Religion is not required for morality (and to be honest, morality is often ignored by the religious). Are you seriously suggesting, Chris, that the only reason you don’t kill and rape and steal is because God is watching you and you’re scared of what he’ll do to you?
Chris C.,
However Hitler may have felt about the Church, it is in no way clear that he was an atheist.
I don’t think atheism is a belief system like Christianity. Atheist is a word that theists use to describe people who don’t believe what they believe. It doesn’t describe any particular beliefs, just as you can’t know what somebody believes when Catholics call him or her non-Catholic.
Satanists (or some of them, at least) believe in God. Buddhists don’t believe in any gods, and are sometimes called atheists or nontheists. It is difficult to pin down what Hindus believe, and they would seem to be neither atheists nor theists.
Who would you rather have as a babysitter for your kids? A Satanist who believes in God, or a Buddhist who doesn’t? :-)
David, given the choice and with nothing else to go on , I gotta go with the Buddhist, though I am not sure the term “believer” should be applied to the Satanist. He knows God exists but refuses to worship him. I don’t think that qualifies.
Back to Hitler not to quibble, but while the term “atheist” might not stricly speaking apply to him, the term “believer” does not either. Pope Pius XI in his encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge(1937) specifies(par 7)that being a believer is more than declaring oneself to be so. He takes clear aim at Nazi ideology and denies it as being in any way a belief in God, whatever language its adherents may use. I am paraphrasing, sorry I can’t post it.
If God Does Not Exist… …Everything is permitted. So goes the saying. I don’t buy it.
I agree in a way, and I disagree in a way. I mean, I don’t buy it for some atheists, but I but it for others. So I feel like a distinction is useful.
-I think that an atheist can develop and live by a moral code, even one that closely models Christian morality. (This atheistic moral code would be founded, I think, on a recognition of the value and dignity of a human being; “good” and “bad” would then relate to what supports or detracts from a human being’s flourishing as an individual and as a community member.)
-But I also think that a different atheist can develop a moral code that conflicts with Christian morality, or can even reject the notion of morality all together. It’s possible to step from the notion of “no God” to the notion of “no morality” and finally to the notion “anything goes.”
In short: sure, atheists can develop, and live by, a moral code. But other atheists can also reject a moral code, in part because they reject the notion of God. (And obviously, theists can also partially reject a moral code, or live in a way contrary to a theistic moral code, because men are selfish, sinful, etc.)
But every theist also lives according to how he or she understands religious morality, and that understanding may or may not correspond to “true morality,” so, from this standpoint, a theist could very easily reject true morality because of his or her religious beliefs.
I’ve met a fair share of atheists, agnostics, and unbelievers, but I’ve never encountered anyone, believer or otherwise, who really thought “anything goes.”
But every theist also lives according to how he or she understands religious morality, and that understanding may or may not correspond to “true morality,” so, from this standpoint, a theist could very easily reject true morality because of his or her religious beliefs.
Agreed. That’s part of what I said in my last line of my comment.
I’ve met a fair share of atheists, agnostics, and unbelievers, but I’ve never encountered anyone, believer or otherwise, who really thought “anything goes.”
How would you classify Mao, Pol Pot, or Stalin? But regardless, you’re probably right that there isn’t really sane person who thinks “anything goes”, because that is an illogical position — that would mean the “anything goes” person would be okay with me killing them, which is crazy talk. But let’s not talk about the extreme of mass murderers; let’s talk about those who reject morality in every day life, who think stealing is okay or sleeping around okay or whatever.
Take sleeping around – not mere pre-marital sex, but a man taking advantage of multiple women through one-night stands, and having no regrets whatsoever about hurting these women. There do exist such men out there who reject traditional moral constraints when it comes to sex.
Such men could be:
1. Theists whose strange religious beliefs doesn’t have a problem with such behavior.
2. Theists whose religious beliefs prohibit such behavior, but who act anyway because they don’t care, or are sinful, etc.
3. Atheists whose moral beliefs prohibit such behavior, but who act anyway, because they don’t care, etc.
4. Atheists who don’t have a moral code, or whose moral code doesn’t see a problem with such behavior.
For some of those atheists in category 4, I think it’s possible that they might tell themselves that their behavior is okay because there is no God, no afterlife, and no final Judgment.
I’ll repeat what I said above: I think atheists can develop and live by a moral code. But I think other atheists can reject a moral code, at least in part because they reject the existence of God. (And again, I admit that even the most-God-fearing theist can reject a moral code. We’re sinners, after all.)
OK, Thales. Let me point out the flaw in your theory.
The average atheist is not actively rejecting the idea of God. (s)He does not plan their day around “let’s do what God won’t like!”
And where do I get this idea from what you’ve written?
But I think other atheists can reject a moral code, at least in part because they reject the existence of God.
Not to be rude, but that is just stupid. Your problem is that you are taking “Oooh, look! Jesus!” as the default position. You assume that atheism is an active position, as opposed to the more logical attitude of “OK, show me your proof.”
Why would atheists “reject a moral code”? Morality is essentially built on the idea that other people are hurt by your actions.
Like I said to Chris, up above, “as soon as you explain to me why every civilization, no exceptions, has some variation of the Golden Rule (you remember – Do unto others…), then you’ll be a little closer to the truth of the matter.”
Nameless Cynic,
It’s clear that you haven’t read my comments in this thread. Please read them again.
I acknowledge that atheists can live by a moral code; I was then talking about other atheists, those who don’t have a moral code, and I suggest that some of these may be motivated by their belief that there is no God.
It seems to me that someone who does not acknowledge a transcendent Creator is necessarily a materialist. A materialist sees humans as a mere accumulation of random molecules, and their thoughts as simple electrical impulses. It follows that a materialist must deny free will. Without free will, any action deemed “moral” in foundation is an absurdity.
In my opinion, Dostoevsky’s axiom is completely logical from the premise of materialism.
Some materialists might look human the human being as a mere accumulation of random molecules and impulses, but that position isn’t held by all of them. A materialist will deny the spiritual, but not necessarily the metaphysical. Nothing in materialism prevents one from defining the human person as a rational animal, capable of determination and choice, and therefore responsibility.
I am a materialist who believes humans are “a mere accumulation of random molecules”. I fail to see how that is relevant to the question of free will. Just because my choices (moral and otherwise) are the result of chemical reactions, that doesn’t make them any less MY CHOICES. The Mona Lisa is a set of paint molecules, but that doesn’t make it any less a representation of a woman.
As such, I don’t see why materialism would be incompatible with morality. Believing that we’re all the result of biochemical reactions doesn’t stop me from holding doors and donating to charities.
It really seems to upset a great many people who believe in God that there are others who don’t believe in God. It upsets some of them more than one might reasonably expect. One symptom of this, in my opinion, is to drag in Hitler and Stalin. But that’s only one symptom. It sometimes seems to me that some believers take the existence of atheists as a threat to their own (that is, the believers’) faith. It makes them nervous or angry or insecure. [Psychiatric Help 5¢. The Doctor is IN.]
In my view it’s a vindication of terror management theory. Our very existence calls into question their belief in the afterlife and they are terrified that it does not exist. Hence, we threaten a closely-held belief.
Really? A professing Catholic believes NOT because Christ lived,died and rose from the dead but because we are threatened by non-believers such as yourself? No. Doesn’t ring true.
If we are speaking psychologically, it is probably important for believers to feel that centering one’s life on God should result in some objective improvement in one’s life: somehow having God in your life should make you more moral, have a happier life, have a fuller life, a more spiritual life, etc., in some way that is objectively observable. Book of Job notwithstanding, something’s got to be better, right? So it may be difficult to reconcile that idea with an atheist who is happy, content, and leading a moral life. It is tempting to think, “Surely there must be something wrong with them.”
As a believer, I find myself wondering about this issue too. The best that I can come up with is that we believers are “better off”, but only in a way that no atheist would think is important enough to worry about.
David do you think His Holiness Pope Pius XI was being insecure, nervous, or angry when he wrote his encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge (1937)condemning practical atheism of Nazisim, and which I cited for you earlier? He did seem to have Hitler on his mind then didn’t he?
From a Catholic point of view, atheists are moral because God has endowed us with a certain human nature and acting in conformity with that nature (the law of human nature, the natural law, etc) is both moral and for the common good; in a sense, atheists are responding to what is irrevocably their nature. We are moral creatures, predisposed to the good, with a free will to choose the good, and a conscience to torment us when we don’t.
To say that there would be ‘morality’ apart from God, in some sense, is to have a flawed understanding of what morality truly is: for morality is conformity with a transcendental good: God, Goodness itself.
I think the point of Jean Paul-Sartre still holds: “It is nowhere written that ‘the good’ exists, that one must be honest or must not lie…and that, for existentialism, is the starting point. Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for he cannot find anything to depend upon either within or outside himself. He discovers forthwith, that he is without excuse. For if indeed existence precedes essence, one will never be able to explain one’s action by reference to a given and specific human nature; in other words, there is no determinism — man is free, man is freedom. Nor…are we provided with any values or commands that could legitimize our behavior. Thus we have neither behind us, nor before us in a luminous realm of values, any means of justification or excuse. We are left alone, without excuse. That is what I mean when I say that man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment that he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does.”
If there is no God, I don’t think we would exist, thus, this speculation would require some sort of ‘alternative reality’ that does not exist; even if we were able to overcome the first point, a purely material universe would be unconcerned with such questions. Lastly, in the absence of a God and thus universal, unchanging objective norms of morality, we may perhaps (theoretically, ignoring the two aforementioned problems) be moralistic. But moral? According to what standard?
The simple fact that even in a world where God does exist and people still choose to do evil, does not logically imply in a godless world people would be moral.
I cannot fathom why a clump of atoms, no different in substance from a tree or stone, just more complex, should have any “dignity.”
And all moral appeals against “crimes against humanity” inevitably flow from moral constructs all centered upon an ego — because a moral code without God is inevitably anthrocentric, utilitarian, and therefore relative.
So from my point of view, the idea collapses on itself. In a world without God, everything is permitted: in the sense, there is no true — universal and objective — reason binding on all consciences, hardened or not, as to why something “evil” should not be.
1. Granted, the theist and the atheist will differ in how they conceptualize the meaning of morality, but at day’s end, they’re both talking, practically, about the quality and consequences of human action.
2. I used to consider Sartre as giving voice to the ramifications of atheism, but nowadays I’m less sure of that. A lot of his ideas apply to particular human experiences, but they’re less than normative and universal in my opinion.
3. To avoid relativism, all the atheist needs is a standard outside his or own subjectivity to which human action can be judged as right or wrong. I don’t think that standard has to be eternal. It can be temporal and still be universal and unchanging. For example, murder always and everywhere causes harm–to the person murdered, to the murderer (psychologically if not spiritually), to society (assuming the murder takes place within a society). Whether or not murder leads to eternal loss and suffering, it certainly leads to temporal loss and suffering, and that consequence is enough, in my opinion, to condemn it absolutely.
sorry should have read”…but for reasons so shallow that we are threatened by non-believers…” long day.
Well, this sidesteps a whole array of questions. Supposing it is true that one can act morally without belief in God, the question becomes “what is it to act morally?”. A consequentialist will have a different answer to this question from a deontologist, and both will have a different answer from a (nontheist) Aristotelian. From the perspective of a theist, it is not that consequentialists cannot act “morally” according to the meta-ethical framework of consequentialism itself, but that this “morality” is incomplete and distorted.
Even more troubling, however, is the view that “fellow feeling” or “compassion” for other human beings is justifiable outside of a belief in God. That many atheists admirably act out of such belief is no proof that their actions are at bottom justified, given their own metaphysical commitments. Rather, altruism in the West as it’s currently practiced is best described as a secular development of an essentially CHristian insight–we are all children of God. This altruistic intuition remains even when the framework which makes this intuition coherent has fallen apart.
The theist and the atheist will clearly differ in how they conceptualize the meaning of morality, but they’re both talking about the practical quality and consequences of human action.
I think you are selling WJ’s insight short. He is correct that for the Christian and the athiest “acting morrally” are not the same thing, and this very difference explains the Dostoyevski quotation.
For the Christian, to act morally is cooperate with and to participate in the Love of God for his ceation. To act in an immoral fasion is to act against what IS, is is purely destructive, unloving and disnintegrative insofar as it is immoral. This understanding of what is actually going on in terms of moral action holds true even when the Christian observes the moral atheist. What they see in his moral action is the Love of God operative in him.
The atheist always has man as his measure, either himself, his friends, his culture, or even Rorty’s “better versions of our future selves”. So while the indivudual atheist might escape the relativism of his own mind, he does not escape the relativism as man as such. His difficulty is that for the atheist, is that without God, without an ultimate meaning, man can never be depraved. He might be disliked, unloved, despised, disgusting, depressed, or wrong, but he is never depraved, it is never the case that his actions in themselves attack his essence. The immoral atheist isn’t, or at least does not understands himself as fallen, he understands himself as who he is and what he has done. In short, evil or immoral action has being for the atheist, it is a thing in and of the world. This is not the case for the Christian. What seperates the atheist and the Christian is that for the Christian evil is not permitted even a real existence. Whereas for the atheist anything is permissable.
A agree that morality is a different thing for the theist and atheist, but this difference doesn’t mean that the atheist has no basis on which to morally praise or condemn an action or kind of action.
“But they’re both talking about the practical quality and consequences of human action.”
–Agreed. But this is rather too broad of a characterization to have any significant consequences. No one, I think, denies that atheists are capable of talking about the practical quality and consequences of human action. If this is all “morality” means–I don’t actually know what “morality”means–then of course atheists can be moral. But I take it that Dostoevsky was not denying this, but something else: he was denying that atheists have any ground for maintaining that some actions are never permitted. (This is the most charitable way of parsing his claim, “Without God, everything is permitted.” So Dostoevsky has a more constrained account of what “morality” means than just “acting practically”; it means recognizing that *certain* actions can never be permitted *because* we are all creatures of God.)
Why can the harm caused by murder not provide ground for maintaining that it is never morally permitted?
Well, suppose that by murdering one innocent you can save some greater number; or suppose that you are an Athenian and the victim is a Melian getting in the way of your empire; or suppose that the victims father killed your mother and so his murder is not only justified but enjoined upon you by your tribes code. These are three examples of moral theories in which murder is justified in some instances: act consequentialism, thucydidesn realism, and traditional tribal honor codes. The prohibition against murder *in all circumstances
Why couldn’t an atheist reject act consequentialism, thucydidesn realism, and traditional tribal honor codes because the harm caused by murder leads him to conclude that murder is always immoral and that therefore these three “moralities” are wrong?
Well, my point was only that a prohibition against murder in all scenarios only makes sense against the backdrop of a particular anthropology according to which the human is accorded an immense dignity by virtue of her being an image of God. I earlier had claimed that, while of course the atheist *might* be attracted to certain moral intuitions such as equality, non-violence, human dignity, altruism, etc., he will have no way of justifying his attraction to these intuitions on the basis of his own ontology, and so he will find himself in one of two positions, both of which suffer from grave defects: he will either adopt the pose of Sartre and will embrace his absurd commitment to ideas knowing full well they cannot be justified given the meaningless chaos that is existence, or he will adopt the position of Rorty and suggest that we don’t need reasons for justifying our intuitions at all. In neither case is the atheist’s commitment to these ideals rationally justifiable on the basis of what the atheist is himself committed to, since he is committed to a vision of the universe in which the human person (and indeed anything at all) has no ultimate purpose or meaning–and a fortiori a purpose or meaning that would entail a prohibition on murder in all circumstances. So while I suppose it is *possible* for an atheist to hold to this position, it is neither rational nor likely.
I’d also suggest that the “harm caused by murder”–as you put it–is very vague. What *is* the “harm caused by murder” after all, and can we specify this “harm” in a way that is neutral with respect to the competing claims of theism and atheism? I suspect not. Hence I would like to know from the atheist who believes that the harm caused by murder is such that it can never, under any circumstances, be committed, what he thinks that the harm of murder is.
I just saw that you started to address this question above, but I’m not persuaded by what I find there. Suppose Silenus is right that the best thing for human beings is not to have been born, and the second best thing is for them to die young; if this is true–and why shouldn’t it be– then how is murder causing harm to the one murdered? If you say that existence is “good”, and that being deprived of existence is thus a harm, I’d want to know (from the atheist) *why* existence is good. What makes it good, in other words? Also, I just don’t see why murder can be specified as being psychologically damaging to the one who commits it without a robust anthropology subtending that claim; and I further am not persuaded that murder *is* always psychologically damaging. Why should we not think that that damage is caused largely by hangups caused by a lingering sense of Christian codes or guilt and shame and not by the act itself?
WJ,
I appreciate your challenges. Keep ‘em coming. A couple remarks that might help clarify my position:
1. I am not claiming that a theist’s morality and atheist’s morality will be identical. An absolute prohibition against homosexual acts, for example, only makes sense, in my view, given a certain religious understanding of human sexuality.
2. An atheist may not support the prohibition of murder in all circumstances, but he or she would likely distinguish between unjust killing and just killing as the theist does. Those situations in which an atheist supports what a theist considers murder would lead the atheist to claim that the supported killing is not murder (unjustified killing), but a just taking of human life. Some theistic moralities allow for killing in war (even the direct killing of innocent people) and the death penalty.
I want to address you other questions, but it’s time for me to get to work. I’ll respond to those later today. Promise.
Cheers!
Hi Kyle,
Thanks. That’s helpful. I agree with both points (1) and (2–though, of course, many new natural lawyers will not concede (1), but I want to point out that, with (2), it seems to me you’re very close to conceding Doestoevsky’s point (on my reading of that point). Suppose we define murder as the intentional killing of an innocent. According to Christian morality, this is never just. According to your hypothetical atheist, it *may* be just, given other circumstances. But this is to say that “everything”–including the intentional killing of an innocent given other overriding concerns–is permissible. And this I take to be Doestoevsky’s point. He’s not saying that atheists can’t be good people, or must live life as though they were characters on Jersey Shore, but that, absent a belief in God as creator and Lover of the human race, *all* kinds of action may be seen as justifiable, given other circumstances.
I admit I’m pressing a peculiarly nuanced and perhaps over-charitable interpretation of Doestoevsky here, so you’d be right to press me on that. I also admit that some contemporary deontologists believe that they can provide a justification for prohibiting certain actions no matter what the consequences absent an appeal to God. But Kant did not think this, and for good reason. The arguments of contemporary deontologists to that effect fail.
Part of the problem here is the vacuousness of the term “morality.” But this is a bigger issue.
Continuing my response above…
3. I’m not an atheist, so I’m hesitant to speak for them, but putting on my poorly-fitting atheism hat, I would say that the harm of murder is found definitely in the loss of life, quite possibly in the social reactions(fear, grief), and also possibly, though not always clearly, in the murderer himself. According to Shakespeare, murder leads to the misery of meaninglessness (life is tale told by an idiot…); Woody Allen challenged this idea in Crimes and Misdemeanors, but even in his ultimately guiltless murderer, we see a deadening of the conscience to the crime committed and to human life in general. An atheist could, I think, reasonably consider this deadening of the conscience to be a harm.
4. I’m not versed enough in atheistic thought to know the reasons they may have for concluding existence is good, but, even assuming that they have no foundational reason for holding this, I’m not sure that it’s an unreasonable (though certainly challengeable) presupposition. We all have our presuppositions that ground our thinking.
I see where you’re going with your interpretation of Dostoevsky’s idea, but it’s not clear to me that atheists have to hold, given their atheism, that all kinds of action may be justifiable. I doubt you could find many an atheist willing to defend the rape of children or genocide. Some actions would seem to be out of bounds for them no matter what the circumstances.
The initial question can be understood in one of two ways. It can be affirmed as the ontological basis for morality in general, or it can be understood as the psychological motivation for morality in a specific individual. The psychological statement can only be made about some specific individual, and only if it happens to be contingently true about that person’s psychological make-up. It cannot be applied universally to all people as a matter of logical necessity. It is a confusion to merge these two and assert that all moral behavior by all moral agents is, of necessity, more or less consciously motivated by belief in God. That is not only false, it doesn’t follow from the truth of the initial statement. In a statement formulated as follows: “If God doesn’t exist everything is permitted,” the literal content of the statement is about the necessary relation of objective morality to the existence of God, not of subjective moral judgements to belief in God.
My claim is that an atheist can point to an objective moral standard without reference to God or divine law. In other words, it is, in my view, possible to have a moral standard beyond the subjective if God does not exist.
Is it your view that such a standard can be held by the atheist within a perfectly self-consistent worldview? Or, to reference your reply to inceptorphilosophus, are suggesting that it is truly possible that there is no God, or that God, even if He exists, is could be irrelevant to the true ontology of morality?
Is it your view that such a standard can be held by the atheist within a perfectly self-consistent worldview?
Yes.
r, to reference your reply to inceptorphilosophus, are suggesting that it is truly possible that there is no God…
I don’t believe that God doesn’t exist (sorry for the double negative), but I’m not absolutely certain of his existence. I could be wrong.
…or that God, even if He exists, is could be irrelevant to the true ontology of morality?
If God is anything like how I understand him, then he’s not irrelevant to the ontology of the world.
Thanks for the simple, straightforward reply to the first question, at least. I don’t think that your response to the second and third questions were quite as on target, but I can only gather that you affirm that it is truly possible that there is no God, but you believe that He exists (sort of), and that, if He exists, He is not irrelevant to the ontology of morality.
Are there any actual, real world examples, in your view, of a perfectly consistent atheistic worldview that acknowledges objective morality and takes moral standards to be as binding as any consistent and intelligent theist would take them Utilitarian ethics, perhaps?
I believe in God, but my faith flows from hope rather than certainty.
I imagine atheistic ethics are as varied as theist ethics, and they share many of the same ethics languages. An atheist could hold a utilitarian ethical view, obviously, but an atheist could also subscribe to a personalist ethics, or a virtue ethics, or an ethics based on hospitality–welcoming the other not knowing who or what the other is.
Is it possible that moral atheists are obeying God without even realizing it?
It is possible. It is also possible that I, a theist, am citing a fiction when I appeal to the divine as the source and basis of morality.
Actually that’s not possible, as God’s existence is necessary! ;)